President¡¯s former home torn down

President Kim Dae-Jung's private house, cherished as the site of his political ordeals in his opposition days, has been torn down.

The removal of the house, which had 100 square meters of floor space on a lot of 280.5 square meters, was decided at a directors meeting of the Asia-Pacific Peace Foundation in early August.

With the approval of President Kim it was pulled down Aug. 28, and construction work is under way to build a five-story structure on the lot. The directors decided to build a new five-story structure on the lot for the foundation and Kim's use as a residence after he finishes his presidential term.

President Kim lived in the house from March 1962 and moved to Ilsan, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi Province, at the end of 1995.

Kim gave the house to his first son, Rep. Kim Hong-Il of the Millennium Democratic Party, who turned it over to his mother, Lee Hee-Ho, when he moved to Seogyo-dong near Donggyo-dong in July last year.

The house was rocked by an explosion in 1971. In particular, Kim had been under virtual house arrest there after returning home from his kidnapping by Korean intelligence agents in Japan in 1973.

Under the military authoritarian regime in the 1980s, the media, which was not allowed to use his real name, had to identify him as the ¡°Donggyo-dong figure¡± in news reports, using the name of the village his house was located.

In consideration of the symbolic history, President Kim had planned to preserve it as it was, but he decided to remove it for security considerations after his retirement from the presidency, according to officials of the foundation.

Cheon Seung-Hoon raphy@donga.com